Fear of world war has crept back with alarming swings in the political mood.   Crises and hopes on the Korean peninsula and the NPT talks  in Geneva will be followed this month by the UN Secretary General’s new disarmament initiative, President Trump’s decision on the Iran nuclear agreement, and the Pentagon’s latest missile defense strategy

Dr Dan Plesch presented his disarmament research at the NPT PrepCom 2018 in three presentations.

On the first panel organised by Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament, he joined Fabian Hamilton MP, the UK Labour Party disarmament spokesman (photo) to discuss CISD’s project scrapweapons.com with the International Parliamentary Union.

On the second panel organised by Western States Legal Foundation, he gave a briefing on US conventional military strength and addressed the question of his latest “The Conversation” article ‘Could the US win WW3 without using nuclear weapons?’ .

“In analysing crises and the risk of war, there is a destabilising trend to overestimate US adversaries and underestimate the US military, which may even be able to disable Russian nuclear forces without using America’s own nuclear forces; and the US outclasses all other potential adversaries. Fortunately, the tested Cold War arms control agreements provide prototypes for global security.” said Dr Plesch who leads the www.scrapweapons.com project at SOAS.

On the third panel organised by Western States Legal Foundation, he discussed the tradition of Southern leadership on disarmament at the UN.

Link to Dr Plesch’s article “Could the US win WW3 without using nuclear weapons” in The Conversation – https://theconversation.com/could-the-us-win-world-war-iii-without-using-nuclear-weapons-94771